Rating: 
Summary: So, who is really criminally insane here?
Review: Lehane will take you on a magical mistery tour this time. Enjoy the trip while you can because this will lead to a "bad trip" for sure!While Teddy gets to the Shutter Island, you start to think that there is a big brother watching him everywhere (is there? is he ever getting paranoind?). As Teddy's truth is the only truth you have all over the book (until THAT twisting final), you start to ask yourself who is really the criminally insane after all (The "patients"? The staff? The marshalls themselves? Are you getting insane with them? Or Lehane - Well, after reading the book the sensation is that Lehane deserves a Pulitzer, and then, be sent immediately to Asheciliffe as DANNIEL SHEEN...). And going back to the 50's, start thinking about your average prozac as "radical aproaches", and lobotomies, as usual procedures... This is an Orwell's 1984 with the difference you can't tell if big brother exists outiside the nutters heads (and your own, even after turning over the last page - so, does that make you a nutter?). Is it about deception or redemption? Or both? Who's the bad guy here (is there really one)? This book will leave you with more questions after reading it then before. Not questions about the story,no, no. The type of questioning you do after going trough a nervous breakdown and surviving it. The type of questioning Teddy would do to himself. And that's what make this book HUGE. As said all over the book: "You can leave Shutter Island, but Shutter Island will never leave you"
Rating:
Summary: A great read!
Review: A great read! I truly enjoyed reading this It's a rarity these days to find an author capable of such good storytelling. The story is well written and very engaging, and despite the fact that it lost some momentum in the middle, I found myself eagerly turning pages to find out what would happen next. All in all, though this is not quite a perfect novel, it comes close.
Rating:
Summary: Really Great !
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I wont give you the plot because a lot of other people have already done so. Simply put its a great book about reality and fantasy. How all of us use fantasy to hide our inner-pain and also our true selves. The characters, the dialogue, the plot,the end. All top-notch. In my opinion its not as good as "Mystic River" but I think its because it really fit my taste in books. But this is also another great novel and I cant wait for his next book. On a final note I did feel thislike "Mystic River" transcended genres and becomes a piece of literature.
Rating: 
Summary: The last 50 pages will win you over
Review: U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule have taken the ferry from Boston to Shutter Island, the site of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a maximum security institution. Daniels has been called in to help locate an escaped patient, a certain Rachel Solando, who found herself in Ashecliffe after murdering her three children. How Rachel escaped is a mystery, though the fact that she managed to break out of a locked room and get past several manned checkpoints and a gaggle of poker-playing orderlies suggests that she had a lot of help. The fact of Rachel's escape is not the only strange thing about Teddy's new assignment. Rachel's doctor is also missing, having left for his vacation immediately after her escape. That he was allowed to leave is a serious breach of standard operating procedure in a lockdown, yet Ashecliffe's deputy warden and the hospital's Chief of Staff seem unconcerned. There is, too, the mystery of what really goes on at the hospital. Rumor has it that the doctors engage in horrific experimental surgeries, ice pick lobotomies on patients who are not anesthetized. Certainly it is suspicious that the old lighthouse, now allegedly functioning as a sewage treatment plant, is under heavy guard and is wrapped in electrified fencing. Reading Shutter Island, my review of the book writing itself in my head, I was going to say that the story is pretty good, if perhaps unbelievable in parts--the marshal's' mounting paranoia and this forbidding facility where creepy things happen, an island they can't leave until a ferry, delayed by a hurricane, returns for them. The book would, I thought, make a decent movie, perhaps a better movie than it is a book because--and this was my chief complaint--the dialogue between Teddy and Chuck is so terribly clunky. "They do it, and it's legal. Only humans get schizophrenia. It doesn't happen to rats or rabbits or cows. So how are you going to test cures for it?" "On humans." "Give that man a cigar." "A cigar that's just a cigar, though, right?" [groan] Teddy said, "If you like." There are, in addition, some unbelievable dream sequences that annoyed me. Nobody talks--or nobody should talk--like Teddy and Chuck do, and nobody has dreams as vivid as Teddy has. But.... But then I read the last fifty pages of the book--which went very fast indeed--and I forgave Lehane the dreams and the clunky dialogue because, I now think, they make sense given the plot. It's a good book. And I still think it would make a good movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Another disappointed Lehane fan
Review: Having loved Lehane's previous books, I was really looking forward to this one. What a disappointment! Whereas his Kenzie/Gennaro series pushed the boundaries of its genre, and Mystic River transcended it altogether, Shutter Island reads like a first draft. The situation is contrived, the characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is replete with cliches, and the writing is just plain clunky. I wanted to abandon the book long before the "surprise" ending, but having taken it on a plane with me I was stuck with it all the way to the bitter end. Don't make my mistake!
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious and predictable as well as being totally unrealistic
Review: A very fast read about a cop dealing with is own personal tragedies who finds himself on an island as Hurricane Carol storms into Boston in 1954. As if a hurricane and his own widowhood weren't enough the island in question contains nothing but a mental hospital for the criminally insane. The hero, Teddy, quickly grows ill-at-ease with the condescending attitude displayed by the staff of the hospital. Some of the patients assert that they are innocent victims being held against their will. On top of that Teddy's own partner seems to know more of what is going on than he is willing to share. Some have said that this was a shocking book with a surprise ending but I could see where it was heading fairly quickly. I thought that there were a lot of contrivances and of course the big surprise was a bit of a let down. It was a good pot-boiler type of mystery and I read through it quickly enough that I can't say it was a waste of time. "Shutter Island" is a good beach read but will never make it into the annals of great literature.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Frustrating
Review: This whole story deserves a five star rating but for the ending. I guess in some peoples' opinions that is where the real brilliance lies, but to people like myself I don't like untidy endings. I could not put the book down, no doubt about it. I was consumed by it, just like all his novels. When I reached the last page I had to reread it because I could not believe it. I felt cheated somehow because I could not understand it. Who am I fooling? I was just plain angry. I wanted a different ending. Now, looking back, I realize that perhaps I was wrong. I am still thinking about this book that I read almost 4 months ago! How many books stay with us like that? It may be a little like the "Twilight Zone" but this book makes an impression, and is not that a sign of a great novel?
Rating:
Summary: I'm not crazy about his book, or am I?
Review: This was my first time with a Dennis Lehane novel, and it won't be the last. Shutter Island is a page turner from the protaganist's arrival on Shutter Island, site of an Alcatraz/ Maclean Hospital style fortress, to the hairy, twisted ending that follows some three hundred and thirty pages later. Heroic federal marshals, nefarious psychiatric ward surgeons, and a host of colorful inmates at the asylum decorate this mystery that occurs on a small spit of land at the far end of Boston Harbor, and takes place over four days in 1954. Bostonians will recognize references to the Cocoanut Grove fire, Deer Island pollution, and to nearby locales of Attleboro, Hull and Nantasket Beach. Whereas 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' describes a similar era of mental institutions and delves much more deeply into comic/tragic experience of the inmates, Shutter Island is straight ahead detective work with a psychological twist. The pages will rush by as you race ahead with the federal marshall and his partner while they hurry toward solving the mysterious secrets of Shutter Island. I recommend this as a great weekend read...oops, they're coming to take me away! They're coming to take me away. Have to go.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and powerful
Review: Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at Shutter Island looking for proof of a terrible conspiracy--he has evidence that the doctors at the Island's mental institution are engaging in experiments similar to those undertaken by the Nazis. Together with his partner, Chuck Aule, Teddy begins by investigating an impossible escape. Although the doctors seem compassionate, Teddy knows that something isn't right. And when he begins feeling physical symptoms, he suspects that he will not be allowed off the island again. Yet, the escaped woman seems to be sending him messages in code, messages that might reveal what he needs to escape and to reclaim his own life. Author Dennis Lehane writes a compelling suspense novel. War hero Teddy Daniels is a fascinating character, haunted by the death of his wife and the man who killed her--a man he knows to be on the island. He soon learns that, with drugs, the boundary between sanity and insanity is not always clear--and may be controlled by others. SHUTTER ISLAND is a fascinating examination of a man. Daniels's questions about sanity, about government research, and about the line between justice and revenge are fundamental issues both for the character and for everyone, adding depth to the story. Lehane's strong writing propells the reader through the story just as Daniels is propelled from one danger to the next. The novel is a quick read, but it is one of those stories that sticks with you, repaints your memories--and the way you see the world. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Good but definitely not "shocking"
Review: Before this book, I read two of Dennis Lehane's previous books, "A Drink Before the War" (very disappointing) and "Mystic River" (good, but not great). Based upon some reviews, I anticipated liking this book much more than the previous two. I was right. I liked "Shutter Island" much more than "Mystic River" but I gave them both the same scores (4 out of 5). The only thing that kept "Shutter Island" from garnering a 5 was that I figured out the major "mystery" halfway through the book. Frankly, I'm surprised that not too many other people seem to have caught onto what was happening. To me, it was quite obvious. Regardless, knowing the major "twist" didn't prevent me from enjoying the book. Although it won't have you on the edge of your seat desperately anticipating each turn of the page, it's a fairly fast read and an enjoyable one. Out of the three Lehane novels I've read thus far, this is easily his best one in my opinion (though it's quite different in style from the previous two I've read). Recommended.
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